Sunday, August 30, 2015

US Occupies Yemeni Island

US Occupies Yemeni Island

by Stephen Lendman

Fars News said “(t)he US has invaded and occupied Yemen’s strategic Island of Socotra (part of the Yemeni archipelago) in the Indian Ocean and is now building up its biggest naval base there, media reports said.” More on this below.

Obama’s war on Yemen using Saudi-led regional proxies is perhaps the region’s most destructive, underreported conflict - five months of genocidal war passing under the radar almost unnoticed.

US major media report little about it. Other Western counterparts give it short shrift.

Most Americans likely never heard of Yemen - for sure know nothing about raging conflict, planned and orchestrated by Washington - to return the nation to US client state status, putting millions of Yemenis in harm’s way, suffering because of a combination of US/Saudi aggression and blockade, creating a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.

Casualties number in the many thousands more than officially reported. People are killed by war. They’re starving to death or dying from untreated wounds or diseases.

The entire so-called civilized world is dismissive - mindless that millions of Yemenis could perish before conflict ends. It could rage for years - perhaps replicating Washington’s endless wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Donbass, plus almost entirely ignored covert ones and global destabilization.

Scant reports, almost always in print media, read like Pentagon press releases - pure rubbish, bald-faced lies and coverup, ignoring Washington’s responsibility for genocidal slaughter, blaming victims for its crimes, standard procedure in all US wars of aggression to make the world safe for monied interests, enriching them more than ever.

In 2012, Washington began covertly deploying air, naval and marine forces to Socotra and Oman’s island of Masirah at the Strait of Hormuz’s southern exit point.

Leaked reports suggest Washington has around 50,000 military forces on both islands - along with other regional strength, enough firepower to attack Iran or other regional targets if ordered.

Fars News cited Arabic-language Al-Masirah TV quoting a Spanish language newspaper saying “(h)undreds of workers from Asian countries have been deployed by the US navy to construct its biggest naval base on the island.”

What Pentagon officials have in mind is highly classified. Whenever US forces mass in a region, war usually follows - whether against current adversaries or new ones remains to be seen.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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